Mayor Bloomberg on Drones: ‘You Can’t Keep the Tides From Coming In’

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he has concerns about controversial drones watching the city’s population, but he simply sees them as an inevitability.

“We’re just going into a different world, uncharted,” he said during his weekly WOR radio program, pointing to ubiquitous cameras on the outside of buildings. “Like it or not, what people can do–or governments can do–is different and you can to some extent control [it], but you can’t keep the tides from coming in. We’re going to have more visibility and less privacy. I don’t see how you stop that. It’s not a question whether I think it’s good or bad, I just don’t see how you can stop that because we’re going to have them.”

And although at least one lawmaker in Albany is drafting legislation to restrict drone usage in the name of privacy concerns, Mr. Bloomberg appeared to dismiss this sort of legislative solution.

“Everybody wants their privacy but I don’t know how you’re going to maintain it,” the mayor explained. “This is something that society really has to think about, and not by writing a quick piece of legislation. These are long-term, serious problems. Whether we have the discipline to approach problems that way, I don’t know. I mean, Everybody demagogues on all these things; there’s some serious issues before you write legislation.”

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